


you in my life

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coulson is great at emotional support, Daisy feels, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Future Fic, Make Daisy Happy, Mentions of Meldrew, mention of Hive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:52:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6602788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy and Coulson talk about regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you in my life

He feels ambivalent about showing up in front of her still sporting his wounds. He knows Daisy, he knows in what kind of guilt hell she has to be right now. He puts his arm in a sling (the injuries too recent for a new prosthetic yet) and searches the base for her.

She is watching over Andrew, while the man is unconscious in one of the pods.

“How is he doing?” Coulson asks.

“He still has to be kept in a medical coma but Simmons seems hopeful about the new version of the… I hate calling it _cure_.”

“I know.”

So it’s good news. Daisy doesn’t look like good news, but he can’t blame her. Until Andrew wakes up and she can check he’s going to be fine there’s not much rest for her. Coulson looks at Andrew’s sleeping figure as well, feeling that it’s been _years_ since he’s seen the man’s real face. Relieved but uneasy until he actually sees him awake and walking about.

“May told me once that she wished she and Andrew had never met,” Daisy says.

“Why?” Coulson asks, stunned, and a bit heartbroken for May.

“Because every bad thing that had ever happened to Andrew was because of her.”

And every good thing, Coulson adds mentally. But he can understand why, today, Daisy can relate to the feeling. She keeps eyeing his arm.

“Do you ever think about how Andrew would have never turned into Lash if he hadn’t come back to SHIELD because _I needed help_?”

Never, but Coulson has sometimes thought about how he himself called Andrew to help him with the carving and that probably started everything. But it’s very much like Daisy to go back to the point where it’s all her fault. Just like it’s very much like her to blame herself for what that monster wearing Grant Ward’s face made her do.

“How long have you been here?” he asks, instead of answering the question, because he knows she wouldn’t listen anyway.

She shrugs and looks cold for a moment.

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

Coulson touches her arm.

“Come on, let’s grab something to eat.”

“I-”

He can sense she wants to accept his offer but she’s afraid of crossing paths with other people. She’s been avoiding mostly everyone since she came back. Even though everyone knows it wasn’t her fault, what happened, that it was That Thing controlling her, Daisy is Daisy and she is going to feel bad around people she hurt, even if it wasn’t her choice to hurt them and she could do nothing to stop it - and in the end she did everything to stop it, and saved them all.

“It’s late,” he tells her. “There won’t be anyone in the kitchen.”

She nods, looking back at Andrew’s sleeping figure like she doesn’t like to leave him alone.

 

+

 

He makes hot chocolate for both of them, a shortcut to comfort and Daisy could use the extra energy (he could, too, but he keeps forgetting). When she offers to take care of it Coulson reminds her that he is used to doing things with one hand, and a few days more like this won’t kill him.

She puts her hand over his sling as the milk warms up.

“I’m sorry.”

“And I’m going to tell you what I’ve told you the previous dozen times you’ve apologized to me,” he says, fondly. “That it wasn’t your fault.”

She sits down and waits for Coulson to bring the mug of chocolate to her.

The kitchen is blissfully vacant, as he hoped (he knows Mack and Joey have been having trouble sleeping and sometimes play video games late at night) but eerily silent. The base a bit quieter after everything.

“I don’t pretend to know what it felt like, what That Thing did to you,” he tells her, once he’s gotten the drinks and sits down. “But I know a bit about being forced by something external - or internal - to hurt people you care about.”

Daisy gives him a blank stare.

“Yes, Coulson, but you pushed me into a cell and locked me up, you didn’t explode my prosthetic arm and proceed to try to do the same with my head.”

He has no reply to that except to tell her it wasn’t her again, and she’s heard that before. Daisy looks at him struggling to find the words and she lifts her hand to his head, pressing her index to his temple. It’s a rare intimate gesture for Daisy, at least between them, and Coulson guesses it’s testament to how emotionally exhausted she is after everything has ended.

“Your head still hurting?” she asks.

He nods. “Your powers are impressive,” he tells her. “Even when you’re trying hard to pull back. And you did. You stopped it.”

“Not soon enough,” she says.

“You didn’t kill anyone,” Coulson tells her.

“Close enough for some,” she shrugs.

“I appreciate your concern,” he tells her, “but I don’t appreciate being the tool of self-flagellation.”

“Sorry,” she mutters, drinking from her mug.

Coulson smiles and wraps his hand around her wrist, on the table, and gives it a little squeeze. Daisy returns the smile, or tries to, which is the most relaxed Coulson has seen her in days, probably weeks.

“Hey, you let me have the Grumpy Cat mug,” she notices.

“It was very hard for me to part with it. I hope you appreciate that.”

The comment startles a laugh out of her, and that definitely hasn’t happened in a while. Even Daisy seems a bit surprised by it and for the next few minutes they drink their comfort drinks in comfortable silence.

“I understand how May felt when she said that, though,” Daisy says, all of the sudden. 

“What do you mean?”

She lifts her and looks at him.

“It’s just that sometimes I think how many awful things have happened to you because you met me,” she admits.

He feels a fragile undercurrent to her words but he’s more worried about the content.

“Well, for a starter I would be dead multiple times if I hadn’t met you.”

Daisy rolls her eyes at him.

“You know what I meant.” she says.

He does, and it makes her sad that she thinks like that.

“I think I know how Andrew must have felt, knowing that’s what May thinks,” he tells Daisy.

She stares at him, curious.

“I don’t think he regrets meeting her, despite everything that’s happened,” Coulson says. “I don’t think he _could_ regret it.”

“You mean that?” she asks.

“I do.”

“Why?” she asks, sounding a little annoyed, like he’s being irrational. “You’ve lost so much since you’ve met me.”

And won you, he adds mentally. But it wouldn’t be fair to talk about it like an exchange, like there’s a price to pay _for Daisy_.

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “Maybe I should regret it. But I can’t imagine my life without you in it. And I can’t imagine not being happy that you are - in my life. Not for a day.”

He watches her bite her bottom lip and fears that it’s too much, that she doesn’t need this right now and he has only said it for his own benefit.

“And I’m sorry you feel the way you do about this,” he adds.

“No, I-” she starts, then she pulls back, looking at his injured arm. “I don’t want you to get hurt because of me. I mean, I don’t want _anyone_ to get hurt because of me. But I’m glad too - _happy_ that I’m in your life.”

He thinks it’s the other way around, he’s in her life, he’s just a satellite.

But that’s not important.

“Happy?” he asks, in awe that she chose to put it like this.

“Happy,” Daisy repeats, softly, giving the word its full weight.

They just look at each other, both aware that something important has just happened.

Coulson puts his mug down, and notices, with delight, that Daisy has finished her chocolate. She had spent hours watching over Andrew, she must have been starved.

He can sense Daisy is tempted to crack a joke, to make him clarify that they feel about each other like May and Andrew feel about each other, but there’s no need -

\- they just look at each other and half-smile, and they both lean across the table to kiss each other. Coulson closes his eyes, like some lovestruck teenager, which he guesses it’s accurate, in a way. The kiss also feels to him like a teen kiss, it makes him feel nervous and magical.

It’s brief but when it’s over they’re both smiling, fully, no half-smiles. 

Daisy looks, for lack of a better word, happy.

“Okay?” he asks.

She nods. 

“Admit it. Was it the Grumpy Cat mug?” he asks.

She chuckles, giving him a another tiny, exploratory kiss.

“Definitely,” she says, scratching her nails against Coulson’s cheek. “How can any girl resist that?”

He kisses her back, quick and sweet again, patiently building up to something more.

He grins at her.

“She couldn’t.”


End file.
